As most of you are no doubt aware, many CCP employees were slaughtered in the Tama system yesterday in an unprecedented Live Event announced that same day. 71 members of the CCP in-game alliance took part and were (except for a handful of cowards who warped their capsules out!) eventually sent back to our home system of Polaris in need of new clones.

Our goal was to mobilize a sizeable fleet of devs that would be tough enough to not be wiped out in minutes, but eventually we hoped to attract enough attention to be overpowered and killed. We wanted to give people a fight to remember and we hope we did just that.

In total, CCP destroyed 430 capsuleer vessels belonging to 316 different characters. Included in this are three characters who were accidentally pod killed by the CCP horde, all of which have been reimbursed their losses (fun fact: One of them was Darius III of the CSM). To quote the infamous TomB, the pod he destroyed was because of “Lag!”. Sure, Tom…we all believe you .

In total, 2,009 ship/capsule losses were recorded in the Tama system yesterday, a rather considerable jump from the daily average of just 56 per day from the November 1st to November 22nd period.

CCP lost the following ship types in the engagement:

Capsule

59

Apocalypse Navy Issue

27

Vindicator

10

Guardian

9

Bhaalgorn

8

Machariel

6

Damnation

3

Raven Navy Issue

3

Nightmare

2

Dominix Navy Issue

2

Gallente Shuttle

1

Broadsword

1

Caldari Shuttle

1

The totals for ship losses in the system seem to suggest that CCP employees have a strange tendency for firing upon rookie frigates when they see them, though many larger ships were also destroyed:

Kills total

Killed by CCP

Rookie ship

468

98

Frigate

330

73

Battlecruiser

163

63

Battleship

166

56

Cruiser

93

32

Stealth Bomber

112

25

Interceptor

64

14

Destroyer

51

13

Assault Ship

44

13

Covert Ops

47

6

Force Recon Ship

16

6

Heavy Assault Ship

12

6

Logistics

15

5

Strategic Cruiser

6

5

Capsule

363

3

Shuttle

27

3

Industrial

8

2

Interdictor

6

2

Combat Recon Ship

3

2

Command Ship

5

1

Transport Ship

3

1

Electronic Attack Ship

5

Heavy Interdictor

2

Total

2009

429

Lots of assorted parties joined the fray once word got out. The majority of ships destroyed were destroyed by characters who were not a member of any alliance, with CCP (thankfully!) coming in at the top spot for the alliances.

Not in an alliance

727

C C P Alliance

429

Pandemic Legion

419

Important Internet Spaceship League

85

Goonswarm Federation

50

Only For Fun

40

Test Alliance Please Ignore

34

Northern Coalition.

31

Tactical Narcotics Team

21

RvB – RED Federation

18

Other

155

Our congratulations to the players who made it on to the list of top 25 killers in Tama yesterday, alongside eight developers. This list excludes capsules, rookie ships and shuttles that were killed (because come on, that’s not really sporting, is it chaps).

CCP GingerDude

37

CCP Klumpur

35

Space Chi

33

Sekh Ondaari

32

Jack bubu

24

Beastoria

21

Joe Public

21

CCP TomB

20

CCP Soulless

20

Margido

16

CCP Diagoras

16

MhG29L

16

Jirad TiSalver

16

Blood r4ge

16

The United NPCs of Tama

13

CCP Space Cadet

13

DeVoT1oN

13

Mang0o

12

CCP Zirnitra

12

Murtific

11

CCP Sreegs

11

Gallactica

11

James Damar

11

Mijstor Jedann

10

DarkXale

10

Additional props to Beastoria for landing the final blow on four CCP ships, with Fattymcbutterpants (a name which had the CCP fleet unified in laughter when called out as primary on EVE voice) and another character who should probably be renamed, both achieving three final blows each. We’re also happy to report that whilst NPCs did indeed manage to destroy 13 ships in Tama yesterday, no CCP ships were lost to NPCs. And that’s despite CCP Sreeg’s Nanobot Accelerator rigged buffer tank.

After the last CCP pilot was blasted full of holes and sent on his merry way via the clone express, players kept fighting in the system for almost four hours.

We had our backend tool construct a word cloud from the biggest thread discussing the event, and judging by that, fun was had.

Many thanks to everyone who took part and had fun with us, all of us here at CCP who were able to be there had an absolute blast. I’m certain that this is far from being the last time a fleet is spotted leaving Polaris.

If you have any tips or feedback for us for future events, or want to make fun of our fits, please visit the comments thread for this blog.

I am proud to announce that this winter, we are going to release some long-anticipated ship balancing. Specifically, capital ship balancing.

For a long time, there has been an outcry in the community that fleet fights are stagnating and are just not as fun as they should be. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of pages of forum threads dedicated to this subject both on the official EVE Online forums, other EVE forums, as well as in blogs and articles. There is no shortage of opinions on this subject from players, devs and CSM members; the main concern that has been stated over and over again is that the proliferation of supercapitals is mostly to blame. Supercapitals can effectively deal with any size of target, and killing them takes a tremendous amount of damage. What this means is that with very few exceptions, the fleet with the most supercarriers wins. Huge, expensive ships should obviously be powerful, but there needs to be a way to fight back.

While not everyone agrees that supercarriers are to blame for everything, there were some issues that kept popping up:

Supercapitals are too hard to kill.

Supercarriers are far too versatile.

The Titan superweapon is too powerful.

Dreadnoughts are not good enough.

Remote ECM Bursts should not work on ships immune to ewar.

Sub-capitals are useless in fleet fights.

Supercapitals are too hard to kill

We wanted to make them a little bit weaker, but not gut them completely. We’re doing a simple 20% reduction in Shield, Armor and Hull hitpoints on both supercarriers and titans.

Supercarriers are far too versatile

The reason that supercarriers can deal with any size of ship is the versatility provided by its massive drone bay. Having access to almost unlimited combat drones of all sizes and being able to launch 20 of them at a time means that they have an answer to almost any situation. In fact, we found that drones on capital ships in general to be detrimental to the way fleet fights should work. If you want to deal with sub-capitals, you should bring your own sub-capitals or a carrier. Supercarriers will now have a smaller drone bay and will only be able to put fighters and fighter bombers in it. We are increasing the signature resolution on fighters so that they deal less damage to smaller targets. We are also completely removing the drone bays of titans and dreadnoughts. Seeing as we didn’t want to take damage away from dreadnoughts, we’re boosting the damage bonus of Siege Module I to compensate for the loss of drones. The Moros had its drone bonus changed to a capital hybrid turret rate of fire bonus.

The Titan superweapon is too powerful

Once we decided to reduce the capabilities of the supercarriers, we had to make sure that the “supercapital blob” wouldn’t simply be replaced by the “titan blob.” This meant that we had to do something about the superweapons. The big problem with the superweapons is that they can take out the crucial logistics and command ships of the opposing fleet in the first few minutes of a fleet fight, which severely reduces the capabilities of any remaining sub-capital ships. To fix this, we are changing the superweapon so that it cannot fire upon sub-capital ships (capital ships being Freighters, Jump Freighters, Carriers, Dreadnoughts, Capital Industrial Ships, Supercarriers and Titans).

Dreadnoughts are not good enough

One of the biggest problems with dreadnoughts is the fact that you have to commit them for 10 minutes at a time with siege mode. We are shortening the duration of Siege Module I from 10 minutes to 5 minutes and cutting the Strontium Clathrate cost in half. Dreadnoughts in siege mode will also no longer be affected by Remote ECM Burst. There was some discussion about boosting the dreadnoughts further, but we want to see how they play out with the other capital changes first.

Sub-capitals are useless in fleet fights

The changes we’re making should have a big impact here. Capital ships will have fewer drones to attack sub-capitals. Fighters will deal less damage to sub-capitals. Superweapons won’t be able to shoot sub-capitals. Supercarriers will have fewer reserve fighters and fighterbombers, so having your sub-caps take down fighters and fighter bombers will have more of an impact on the fight.

Logging off should not be a viable tactic

Then there are the logoff mechanics. When you log off your character in space, the ship you are piloting disappears after 15 minutes. This, coupled with the millions of hitponts that supercapitals have, means that very few supercapitals are actually being destroyed. When a fleet is losing a large supercapital fight, they can simply log everyone off and be confident that they enemy fleet will only have enough time to kill a handful of their supercapitals. This kind of meta-gaming is not only un-fun but it just doesn’t make much sense. When you commit your ship to a battle that should actually be a commitment. Only by winning or by making a tactical, well planned retreat should your ship be able to survive. It has been said that spaceships are serious business and they damn well should be. We are changing the logoff mechanics in such a way that as long as your enemies are actively engaged in fighting you, logging off is not going to save your ship.

The end. Except it’s not the end at all.

As a part of our efforts to refocus towards FiS, these balancing changes are going to be the first of many, making sure that we continually balance and shake up EVE for years to come.

After a player logs out, there is a check for player aggression every 15 minutes. If you have been aggressed, the timer extends for 15 minutes; if you have not been aggressed, you disappear as before. Note: this is only for player aggression and will not change what happens when you log off during fights against NPCs.

Hi there. I am CCP Mannapi from the TriLambda team, aka the space art people. We are working on the new nebulas, with the goal of adding a sense of direction and location to the world of Eve.

When looking at the flattened star map you have the concept of north, south, west and east. To see which direction you are facing you can open the mini map (F11) and look at the cone of vision. With the new nebulas you can be to the east of, let’s say, the cloud ring phenomenon and look west, and see the cloud ring nebula.

Click to enlarge

The good folks on Singularity correctly noted in this thread that the star gates should be pointing toward their targets.

We have now oriented the star gates so that they aim at their destinations. A star gate taking you west will now be facing west. But there are more directions in space than the cardinal directions, namely up and down. Solar systems can be right on top of each other, many of which connected with jump gates. The gates will now tilt up and down correctly pointing towards the receiving gate in the destination system. This really shows us how three dimensional the world of Eve is.

We realize that some people have bookmarks at the gates, which might now be located inside the rotated star gate. If this happens to you we apologize for the inconvenience, and you may need to move the bookmark.

This reasoning is correct if you assume that a total forfeit is treating the score as 0 fielded points. That assumption is however, incorrect.

We treat forfeits as if the winning team face a full team and kill them all, and this is done for a reason. Low ranking teams who decide to not show up to their match can essentially grief other teams out of the tournament if they are trying to legitimately use the handicap rule to get extra points.

The argument that The R0NIN did not kill a ship and still managed to progress is a compelling one, and to be honest they could be considered lucky that the other team didn’t show up (given how many points they handicapped by). That said, that they killed no ships in their second fight is no fault of their own and they should not be penalized for it. In our opinion it is the only way to fairly call this match.

This call was made long before the cutoff point was known for the group stage, and at that time we discussed at length the possibility that another team might be bumped out of contention if The R0NIN did make the cut. Ultimately though, we feel that it would be unfairly penalizing The R0NIN to make any other call.

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